


Regress

by scandalsavage



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Batman and Robin (Comics)
Genre: Emotional Manipulation, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Panic Attacks, Seizures, Severe PTSD, Start with actual comics panels then goes into canon divergence, severe traumatic brain injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-20
Updated: 2019-09-20
Packaged: 2020-10-24 20:17:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20711927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scandalsavage/pseuds/scandalsavage
Summary: Bruce wants to save his son. It's understandable. Death doesn't mean anything real anymore.Unless you've experienced it.And sacrificing one son to save the other is muchlessunderstandable.





	Regress

**Author's Note:**

> This is pulled from tumblr (because I finally figured out how to embed images) where I got this ask:
>
>> You know how Bruce took Jason to the place where he died, hoping Jason could remember something to help resurrect Damian? What if Bruce actually succeeded in triggering Jason's memory of what happened on the day he died, but instead of getting the information he needs to revive Damian, Jason goes into shock and dies. Or worse he returns to the state he was in mentally when he crawled out of his grave?
> 
> So a little back story. This is the first comic book that made me cry. I know Bruce has been an ass to his family lately but frankly, in my opinion, this is the most fucked up thing he's ever done (and that’s not even counting the fact that after he subjects Jason to this, Jason punches him (as he should), and he punches Jason back).
> 
> Trying to summarize it in the thing I wrote for this wouldn’t have done it justice so I included the panels which roll right into the little ficlet. So you’ll want read the comic panels like they’re part of the story, because they are.

  
  


He doesn’t register the increasingly labored breathing at his side until movement out of the corner of his eye interrupts his speech.

Jason is doubled over, one elbow bracing himself across his knees, fingers of the other hand digging deep into the dirt, steadying himself against the ground.

“Jason?” Bruce says in concern, stepping toward him. But the younger man, raises his hand in a halting motion and stumbles away a few steps putting more space between them.

Stunned, Bruce watches in confusion as Jason takes too many deep, frantic breaths as though he can’t get any air. He’s hyperventilating, his face suddenly clammy; pale and wet with sweat.

When Jason squeezes his eyes closed only for them to fly wide open almost immediately to stare at ground, refusing to blink until tears well up and drop into the dust, that’s when Bruce is shaken from his shocked stupor and rushes to the younger man’s side.

Just in time to catch him as he suddenly seizes, collapsing into Bruce’s arms while convulsions wrack his body.

He knows the look of abject terror on Jason’s face is reflected on his own. He has no idea what’s happening, how something like this could come on so suddenly, without warning.

Jason doesn’t have a history of panic attacks or seizures. But his pulse has skyrocketed. It’s racing so fast Bruce is worried he’s going to have a stroke or go into cardiac arrest.

“Jason, I-I know it’s hard son, but you need to focus. Please, try to breath or you’re going to–”

Or you’re going to die.

Bruce chokes on the rest of the words. He looks up, out at the rubble of the warehouse that only a couple years ago had blown up around his tortured son and killed him slowly as it filled his ruined lungs with poisonous smoke.

His gaze snaps back down a moment before a wet gurgle sounds from within Jason’s throat. Instantly, without hesitation, Bruce turns Jason onto his side. So he doesn’t drown in the vomit that spills beneath them, splashing onto Batman’s boots.

It doesn’t even register in Bruce’s mind. Jason’s pulse is still ratcheting higher and higher.

He keeps Jason securely in his lap, pressed close against his armor, with one arm. Both eyes fixed intently on the youthful face twisted in agony, watching for any changes, trying to not fixate on the way the pupils are dilated so wide there isn’t the slightest hint of color. With his free hand he starts desperately fishing for the strongest sedative he can safely administer to someone Jason’s size.

Suddenly, Jason’s eyes shut tightly again, his mouth falls open in a silent scream, and he grabs at his head; pressing against his temples with all his strength before taking fistfuls of hair and trying to pull them out.

Terror isn’t strong enough to describe the kind of fear that floods every cell of Bruce’s body and it’s only years of practice that allow him to compartmentalize his guilt and shove it aside. He can’t afford– Jason can’t afford– for him to fall apart.

Letting his violently spasming, child slip gently from his lap to the ground so that he can effectively retrieve the sedative is at once the hardest and easiest thing he’s ever done.

Moments after he depresses the needle’s plunger, Jason’s convulsions slowly abate. His hands drop, boneless, away from his head. His breathing evens out. His lids drop heavier and heavier until he’s taken under.

Finally his whole body relaxes.

Bruce takes a deep breath of relief and realizes he had been holding his own.

But now, in the silence, bathed in the harsh white from the Batmobile’s headlights, darkness pressing in, the crumbled remains of a dark tomb casting sharp, twisted shadows across the eerily still form of the teenager they once buried… now Bruce is left with only his own thoughts.

I did this.

* * *

Two months and two dozen specialists later, the best anyone can tell is that a severe panic attack triggered a seizure which tore open all the old wounds the Lazarus Pits had tentatively mended. The physical trauma inflicted on Jason’s brain is some of the most extensive the doctors had ever seen. And permanent.

He’s lucky to be alive, they’d said.

The last time Bruce saw Jason, the little patches of hair he had torn out had just started growing back. His eyes were vacant as he stared, unseeingly, into the distance. Tim had gently wiped up the clear fluid that occasionally leaked out of Jason’s ears with a tissue. Then, with one final angry, heartbroken glance back at Bruce, he’d wheeled an unresponsive Jason out of the manor, into his new van, and drove away.

Alfred had gone with them.

Tim and Barbara speak to him exactly twice after that. Once to extract Damian from the league after Ra’s managed to resurrect him. And the final time to help Dick finish with his undercover work at Spyral.

None of them are surprised when they find out Bruce lied to them about Dick’s death.

Dick is horrified when he sees Jason again for the first time, when Tim and Barbara fill him in. The look of disgust he levels at Bruce cuts deep. Even though Bruce knows he deserves that and worse.

Damian, who had been conflicted about what happened with Jason, it was cruel and heartless but it was done out of love for him, went easily with Dick to Bludhaven after everything. Dick’s right. It’s for the best.

Bruce deserves it all. He’s aware of that. What happened… what he did… it’s unforgivable.

But he can’t stop himself from checking in on them. Making sure they’re all right.

That’s how, nearly a year later, he learns they’ve all moved to New York together. They have the top TBI specialists there. The boys chose a place close enough to the city that they can do their night jobs but far enough outside the city limits that the lights are in the distance and the noise is non-existent. A peaceful house in a peaceful wood, tucked away from the world, where their broken brother can… can…

Exist.

They take hundreds of pictures. Jason is in every single of them. Never alone. Never forgotten. Always cared for.

But there’s still nothing behind that emotionless gaze.

Sometimes Bruce thinks about putting Jason in the Pit again. Even found himself, with no one to stop him, halfway to New York once.

But the boys haven’t taken him. Dick and Tim and Damian haven’t tried it. They must have a reason.

And if one thing has been made abundantly clear to Bruce, it’s that his judgement absolutely cannot be trusted.

**Author's Note:**

> If you haven’t read Batman and Robin (2011) #20 by Peter Tomasi and Patrick Gleason, you should (you should actually read their whole run. It's absolutely the highlight of N52 and this is just one part of their five issue "Stages of Grief" inspired stories that take place after Damian's death. They start right after the gorgeous silent issue Batman and Robin #18 and it's comics storytelling at its best). 
> 
> Anyway, the really heartbreaking stuff takes place immediately following the panels I’ve included. But like, Bruce purposefully uses Jason's desire to reintegrate with the family and hardcore manipulates him into revisiting the place he was viciously murdered **explicitly to force his son to relive that extreme trauma**. There is no sugarcoating this. There is no explaining it away. And it is 100% in character.


End file.
